Misumi Sadler is an associate professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Director of Japanese language program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has served as Section Head of Asian languages for the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators. Her research areas include: discourse and grammar, language change, pedagogical grammar and teaching training for East Asian languages. Her works include: Grammar in use across time and space: Deconstructing the Japanese “dative subject” construction (2007); “Co-constructing intercultural views and identities in a teaching methods class” (2014). Her next project collaborates with a researcher from a Canadian university and investigates how a Japanese connective particle is used by native speakers and learners of Japanese.

Tim Liao is Professor of Sociology and Professor of Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His sociological interests include methodology, collective memory, and life course analysis. He served as Editor of Sociological Methodology (2009-2015), a journal of the American Sociological Association. While his research on East Asia focuses primarily on Great China, he has also published on Japan and Korea, including his 2013 paper on Nagano women in the silk reeling industry during the Meiji period. His 2015 coedited book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on the territorial dispute between China and Japan. Collaborating with researchers in Hong Kong, he started in 2016 a new project studying Filipina and Indonesian migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong.

Yuchia Chang joined CEAPS as our Associate Director in May 2016. She works with our Director and staff to plan and manage various aspects of CEAPS programs and collaborative initiatives. Yuchia is an arts management professional with over 15 years of experience as administrator, curator, and project manager in the non-profit and higher-education settings. Prior to joining the Center, she worked as the Collaborative Exhibits Manager at Chicago Cultural Alliance and as the Managing Director at the Center for Asian Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago. She has taught arts entrepreneurship at Columbia College Chicago and served on several arts review panels for the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois. She is an independent curator with a special interest in contemporary Asian arts and media.

Duane Johansen is our Outreach Coordinator. Prior to joining the university, he was a high-school English teacher in rural Indiana with nearly 25 years of experience, including stints in the "Region" in northwest Indiana and in inner-city Chicago. Long a proponent of multi-cultural education, he started further developing a life-long love for Asian culture and history by attending NCTAsia (National Consortium of Teaching About Asia) seminars a few years ago and has travelled to Los Angeles, Chicago, Massachusetts, and Japan in his quest to learn more. The proud father of three sons, he loves the poetry of Korea, the artwork of Ai Wei Wei, okonomiyaki, Shakespeare, folklore, graphic novels, and falling asleep in recliners.

Sandy Burklund is an Administrative Aide in the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies. She manages the day-to-day operations of the office as well as the Center finances and human resources duties. She has been with the Center since 2004 and with the University since 1986.